Crafting a Better US Grand Strategy in the Post-September 11 World: Lessons from the Early Years of the Cold War

Abstract

This article compares the instruments of statecraft used to construct grand strategies in the early years of the Cold War—the Truman and Eisenhower administrations—with the Bush administration’s grand strategy and the Global War on Terror (GWOT). It argues that the Bush strategy relied heavily on the military instrument of statecraft in attempts of defeating Al‐Qaeda and did not develop robust and concerted diplomatic, psychological and economic tools to undermine Al‐Qaeda’s ideology and influence. The early days of the Cold War hold valuable lessons for crafting an integrated grand strategy that can fight both the Al‐Qaeda network and its ideology.

Grand strategy and the construction of the national interest: the underpinnings of Sino-US strategic competition

“…In addition, hardly any examinations of "grand plans" can be found (Scobell 2022). A similar picture emerges for the USA: Many articles focus on either "grand principles" (Biegon 2019;Kurthen 2021;Janusch 2022) or "grand behavior" (Gregg 2010;Dombrowski and Reich 2017;Hazelton 2017;Desmaele 2021), "grand plans" receive a lot less attention (Drezner 2011;Tabachnik and Miller 2021). In addition, most scholarship on Chinese and US grand strategy conceives of the states as unitary actors.…”

The Human Domain and Influence Operations in the 21st Century

“…A "whole of nation" approach, which includes not just the instruments of government power but also a nation's population, its private sector, and its independent associations, could also provide useful resources for long term efforts aimed at building relationships and credibility between states. For example, during the Cold War, the United States used academic exchanges, music tours, art, and literature to help promote U.S. and democratic values around the world and blunt communist ideology (Gregg, 2010). The wide array of government and national resources offer a much broader spectrum of resources for shaping beliefs and influencing the behavior of targeted audiences in the human domain.…”

The Not-So-Silent Partner: Patterns of Legislative-Executive Interaction in the War on Terror, 2001-2009

“…On September 14, 2001, the US Congress voted overwhelmingly to authorize President George W. Bush to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against the nations, groups, and individuals responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. So began the post‐9/11 “War on Terror,” a series of initiatives in which the US Congress was largely characterized as an inactive, acquiescent, and compliant bystander challenged by an especially aggressive assertion of unilateral presidential authority and power by the Bush administration (see, for example, Daalder and Lindsay ; Woodward ; Bolton ; Mazarr ; Gellman ; Mitchell and Massoud ; Tunc ; Badie ; Gregg ). While there is some truth to this characterization of Congress, a closer examination of the 2001–2009 period reveals a more complex story.…”